I was just looking at torque values for doing front wheel bearings and brakes today and saw the wheel torque is listed at 63. No mention of it that's for alloy or steel wheels, but ... 63? That's it?

Most cars get at 80 ft-lbs, and I thought the 63 was for alloy only and that steel was like 87.

Can anyone confirm that steel wheels should get 65ish ft-lbs? I half-remember that being written in the manual somewhere.

Cheers,
Will

In both 700s and 900s, the Volvo torque spec for the wheel lug nuts is 63 ft-lbs, front and rear, alloy or steel (ref. the Pocket Data Book and green manuals). It's also stamped on the front hub grease caps for mechanics as 63-65 ft-lbs. It's a fairly light torque by some standards, so I tend to round it up to 65 ft-lbs, cross tightened of course. That's for a wiped dry thread and clean contact surface. Best to re-check it after a few days of driving.

For 240s the Volvo spec is 85 ft-lbs, front and rear, although many people go a little lighter on the fronts with the thought that it helps cut down on overtorquing and warped rotors.

The 63 ft-lb number isn't meant to be that accurate. The Volvo engineering spec for these torques is in metric to the closest 5 Nm (or 4 ft.lbs), which for wheels is 85 Nm. The actual engineering spec is thus 85 +/- 2.5 Nm. Converting that to SAE gives 62.69278269 +/- 1.8439053732 ft-lbs, which rounds to the 63-65 max torque spec for mechanics printed on the hub caps.

I never trust shops with their air ratchet torque sticks even if they say they check the calibrations, so always insist on hand torquing. Even with a calibrated stick, if you drive the nut on full blast the momentum will overtorque the nut, plus there's a greater tendency not to cross tighten. As a further reminder I've always marked the inside of my wheel covers in felt pen "Hand Torque Max 65 Ft-Lbs OYWD", which means Or You Will Die.

I will go so far as to occasionally check what a shop does. Using a torque bar wrench, note the handle angle when you tension it forward close to 60 ft.lbs without moving the nut, then back off the nut and re-tighten it to the exact same angle so you can determine what it was tightened to. I had one case where a large tire shop said they used a calibrated stick and on checking they turned out be unevenly and badly overtorqued, randomly from 85 to almost 120 ft-lbs on all the wheels. That shop got a peice of my mind the next day. There was no apology or offer to re-do them, basically saying it's not a problem and they'd remind the mechanics to check their tools more often, so I vowed to never do business with them again. There's little incentive for mechanics to do better as most shops make them buy their own tools, the sticks aren't cheap and are sold in sets and they rush them to get to work right away in the morning and finish as many cars as they can that day.
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Dave -still with 940's, prev 740/240/140/120 You'd think I'd have learned by now

We should do a thread on the damage that shops do when we are not around to oversee them. My short list:

Use wrong coolant;
overfill oil;
lift car incorrectly, crushing rocker panel;
dirtying floor mats because, you know, its only an old car;
loss of hardware and/or clips.

I could go on and on....